Student Reflection
An overview of what the student learned from working with various forms of technology and how it was used? What were the challenges? AMANDA When reading the requirements of the project and learning we couldn’t use PowerPoint but could use other sources I was, at first, taken back as I had never really used any of the resources listed and had no idea where to go; as a group, we agreed to create a Wiki and a website was created – both of which had never been done by any of us. Gabby took the lead on the Wiki, lucky for me, as I was reading the “how to” tips on Google and when I registered and confused myself! Wiki is nice because it can be updated by many sources or people which makes it perfect for a group project. The main source of technology used was Google Docs – this is one of my favorite domains to use when working with a group because all the documents being referenced can be stored in on main place and updated by the entire group with access always. This was especially important during the brainstorming and checking in process as we’re all students in this class and all have very busy lives in addition to this project and allowed everything to be updated in real time. CANDACE As my peers have already stated, the inability to utilize PowerPoint was a road block. That being said, in an age dedicated to technology, there are many other options that we were able to use. For this assignment, our group worked with Google Docs to share ideas, Wiki for many of the questions that were required to have answers, as well as Google website. These have all shaped up to be user friendly and easy to use. There were a few different challenges that we faced. For one, this group "met" strictly virtually which can create bottlenecks in the process. For example, communicating via e-mail for portions of the communication and then on Blackboard for others, followed by Google drive. When there is different information in different locations, it can be difficult to navigate what is going on. Fortunately, this was a group filled with leaders that were able to delegate the work and keep everyone on the same page and on task. Additional challenges were navigating the sites that were foreign to me, such as Wiki. At first glance, the inability to utilize PowerPoint was scary but in hindsight, it ended up being a good thing, forcing us to venture outside of our comfort zones and learn something new. GABBY Given the restriction of no PowerPoint use for final presentation, we blindly agreed upon a wiki page for our presentation. None of the team had created a wiki before so it was uncharted territory. The most challenging and frustrating portion has been navigating through the wiki world. I have learned the basics but have much more to learn as we continue editing and updating. I have yet to understand how I can move topics around to display in the way I want and that I feel makes the most sense. Google drive has allowed us all to contribute to our My Room website on our own time, in real time, as well as share, edit and comment on documents and photos. Our website designed through Google is very generic and amateur, but it gets the job done. LISA As I reflect on this project I would have to say our greatest challenges was technology itself. Some of our computers didn’t want to work with the browsers, or our not being familiar with building websites where we posted our product as if we were going to start selling it tomorrow. The use of wiki was very interesting since I do not believe any of us had ever used it before but we used that venue to post answers to these questions and give an overview from all of us on the team. Some of us where more adapt at addressing those issues than others but what was nice is that we all pulled together and shared what we had to work with to bring this project to a successful conclusion. I thought we all had a great experience learning how to create a website and how to work with wiki. It was challenging but we came together as a team and worked with each other as we discovered how to do things we would share that information. I found a youtube video on how to use wiki and shared it with the team so we had a better idea of how to work with it and I discovered that wiki is becoming very popular with co-workers. Instead of using massive amounts of emails everyone on the team can share their thoughts and ideas by editing a single page. Very innovative!